What happens when a man is pushed to his limits of agony? How the world has brutally bruised the emotions of the weaker people?
"Gray Epilogue" is the brief view and thoughts of an old person who goes through some dark days of his life.
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The Gray Epilogue
“Yes, I have decided and there is no going back. I have taken a stern decision, an outcome of a conflict between my helplessness and fate. My whole life changed within a week, upside down just that there were no upsides to it anyways.
The loud pounding beats of my heart is running to the never-ending stride of the hands in the round grey clock. The time machine that never turned back time, which I wished it could, sat near the pile of sleeping pills on the table
Rarely on the offending summer heat, a mildly warm breeze flew in through the windowpane. Like an uninvited guest, it whispered hymns in my ears. I felt as if it was Death itself guiding me to Him. As the windows creaked open, letting in some faint rays of the sun almost merging into the depths of the unfathomable ocean, a vision of the outside world caught my eyes. I peeped into the realities that lay outside.
They say when we become old we lose the ability to see bit by bit. But for me, I started to see the world in its true colors as time passed closer to my end. I began to see things more clearly, more vividly, and deeper. I saw people and the animal we are.
I placed my glasses after cleaning the lens with a piece of my tee that was still dry. I am not sure whether it’s the tension or the age showing up, because I was sweating heavily. After a bit of loitering around, my eyes rested at a garden with a little girl.
She was cute and adorable with her tiny hands. She was totally in her own world, playing in the mud, dirt all over her. The world is not the same as it was before, not anymore. This new era of the human race is too dangerous for the little girl. Hell is a better place to walk upon.
Mary also did tie her hair up in a ponytail like that when she was a kid like this. Two weeks before, she tied her head in a ponytail. For a twenty-three-year-old girl, my daughter looked the same as she was during her toddler days.
After her birth, her mother and my wife left us both alone. I always thought she would have been there with a handful of dirt and eyes filled with tears when they lowered my coffin into the pit. Even though I wouldn’t know. I always believed she would be there.
Never in my life, ever did I think that it would be the other way around. For the twenty-three years, I raised her alone only to see her torn apart by a bunch of goons in front of me. She was my daughter. She was raped in front of me where I lay helpless, dead in her cries.
Someone called. The little girl hurried into her house as my already blurred eyes became more blurred with the tears of remorse. Once more I took the glasses off to wipe my tears and noticed that the sleeping pills on the table were still unattended.
Again I started to go down the memory lane, to think about my daughter. I questioned myself about certain things I couldn’t understand. I asked questions without knowing who had the answers to all my queries.
Maybe Death could find me the answers which mortals might find it hard to fathom. I asked Death. I asked why she was born if this was her destiny. I asked wh my baby turned into a helpless girl rather than a dominating primate like a man. I asked why I lived enough to see her die.
Why? I asked Why. I could feel Death avoiding my questions through the serene silence around me in that dark room. Death, the immortal being that leads us to the end of this mortal peril. I have heard people ponder over the afterlife and existence of heaven and hell.
I don’t believe in that. I never cared to believe in anything. If at all, on what grounds were the rules set to humans to be a heaven material or the other? As far as I know, all humans have both good and bad in them.
If there were percentages to decide, I would like to know the desired percentage. I used to tease my daughter talking like this. She was more of a biblical person. I never believed in that, she would have lost the belief when she was in her last breaths. My kid would have understood me. I never stood a chance to ask.
The day was getting darker or maybe it’s the night becoming lighter. My loud heartbeats sang the song for the awaiting last cause. I have already written my will and it might have reached my lawyer’s office by now. It will stop my long lost relatives fighting over whatever I leave behind.
I took the sleeping pills. My hands are trembling more than ever now. It was worse than what I expected it to be. Hesitation just ticked the clock away, it was never going to turn back time. I was aware of that.
About half a glass of pure water followed the sleeping pills into my stomach. The pain receding into my heart started to spread all over the body. I felt a warm embrace upon me. It might be probably death holding me close to him. His hold was becoming tighter and it suffocated me more each second, each heartbeat.
I slept there peacefully. I found the solution to all my problems until then. Death. I died for I am ashamed of being alive.
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